Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!ali
From: ali@polya.STANFORD.EDU (Ali T. Ozer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Open your eyes (Was about Hyper'Card)
Message-ID: <2875@polya.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 21 May 88 14:29:30 GMT
References: <8805170742.AA28361@cory.Berkeley.EDU> <2777@tekig5.TEK.COM> <2028@sugar.UUCP>
Reply-To: ali@polya.Stanford.EDU (Ali T. Ozer)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 35

In article <2777@tekig5.TEK.COM>, wayneck@tekig5.TEK.COM (Wayne Knapp) writes:
> I'm not a Mac expert so I back down of some of the Mac things. (Except that
> the Mac II graphics are slow, that is just untrue.  The Mac II is the most
> responsive windowing system I've ever used ... )

The Mac windowing system is actually pretty slow. Consider the lack of
"smart refresh" windows, for instance. While programming a Mac Plus with 
HD I normally have 8-10 windows open in the Finder. (This seems strange to
some Mac user friends of mine, who occasionally look over my shoulder and
make remarks such as "whoa! you don't know how to close windows?".) Anyway,
between the time when you quit an application and you get back to the Finder
is usually a good 15 seconds --- time just spent refreshing those windows.
You see the empty Finder windows get drawn, one after another, and then,
after a short delay, the windows start getting filled, one by one. Every 
window, even one with a single pixel showing, has respond to a refresh
event. Running on a one-meg machine (no MultiFinder), and going back and
forth often between applications which do not have "Transfer" commands in
their menus can be a nightmare... Running MF of course solves the problem
of having to quit/restart the Finder everytime you run an application, but
then you start getting a lot more windows on your screen, and you get into
the situation where everytime you close a largish window, your system locks
up and has to refresh all the windows under it (Finder windows, other
application windows, etc). 

The Mac II solves the problem by throwing oodles of CPU cycles at the
windowing system. On a B&W Mac II, this makes the windowing system
look fast/decent enough to use. So people then say "oh look the Mac II
windowing system is better than the Amigas!". This just goes to show
that all you need is $4000 worth of hardware to get a windowing system
faster than that of a $600 Amiga.

But, of course, who cares about the Mac! I personally bagged my Mac 
programming position last week. 8-) 

Ali Ozer, ali@polya.stanford.edu